Her Write There
by GhostOfBambi
Summary: Whenever James Potter had a crush that felt as if it was spiralling wildly out of control, he wrote the girl a letter. Trouble was, he never intended for any of those letters to be read. Loosely based on To All the Boys I've Loved Before.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:** Just a quick FYI, though it may seem to those of you who only follow me on this website that I haven't been writing, I've actually spent the past few months co-writing two different projects, one of which is a fic I'm writing with Bee Daily. You can find _that_ fic on the account Ghost-of-Bee. I'm still actively working on my projects, AKA Shelf Awareness and all of the WIPs I've started since last year (everything from Filthy Animals onwards) so if you're at all worried that I've abandoned one of them, I haven't!

Anyway, please enjoy the most YA thing I've ever written, and apologies that this hellsite won't allow for strikethrough in chapters. It should only be an issue in this one!

 **Her Write There**

 **Prologue**

 _Dear Mila,_

 _This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write because I have to tell you how I feel and also I have never written a letter before. My mum gave me a calligraphy pen because I told her I was doing an art project so here goes. I wrote a poem about you that will express my feelings._

 _My poem is called Mila._

 _Mila_

 _You are always on my mind  
I have never met anybody of your kind  
Never shall I kiss someone else's lips  
Not having you around feels like a solar eclipse  
Meeting you was like winning the grand prize  
Immediately my heart rate was on the rise  
I like you more than I like bacon  
My feelings for you will never be breaking  
I'm not sure you will like my poem  
But my love for you is set in stone_

 _James Potter_

 _P.S. I like bacon a lot so you should take this really seriously_

* * *

 _Dear Winnie,_

 _This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write, but I need to tell you how I feel._

 _I was going to write it in an email but I felt weird sending you my feelings in 10pt Helvetica._

 _I know we've been friends for ages now and that's one of the reasons why I'm so scared to write this letter, but I think things have gone too far now and I have to tell you because I can't keep it a secret for much longer. You know mum always says I'm crap at secrets. Plus, I'm scared that I'll blurt it out and if I blurt it out I won't do it right._

 _Here's the thing… I really like you._

 _I mean I romantic styles like you. And would really like to be your boyfriend. You are gorgeous and fun and we have like everything in common so if you read this letter and you feel the same, I hope you'll go out with me._

 _But if you don't want to that's fine and you can tell me to bugger off._

 _James_

* * *

 _Evans,_

 _You looked at me today when you were walking past the art room._

 _Sorry, that sounds creepy and I'm sort of writing without thinking right now so let me explain. It was only for a split second. You didn't even say anything and you probably don't remember, but that's all I've thought about all day since, which means I think I'm officially nuts._

 _The thing is, I know we don't know each other very well and we never really talk, but I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you._

 _You're so beautiful. I think you're the most beautiful girl I've ever met. I love the colour of your hair and I think about your eyes all the time. I know I'm supposed to be thinking mostly about your boobs and your legs and your bum and I don't want to lie to you so I'll admit that I do think about them a lot, but mostly I think about your eyes. They're so GREEN. I've been sitting here for five minutes not writing anything, trying to think of a way to describe your eyes without using the word emerald because I bet every bloke who likes you says that, but that's honestly the best word to describe how rare and gorgeous and green they are. Every time we make eye contact I feel like you can see right inside my head and I'm kind of terrified of you but in a good way. You look like Christmas and I love Christmas and I've had crushes on other girls before but I've never felt like this about anyone in my life._ _ANYONE_ _. It's like you're there every minute of the day even when you're not around. You're so clever and brilliant and it won't surprise me if you get into the best uni in the country. Every time you give a smart answer in class or say something funny or argue with Mr. Fudge for being a sexist old dinosaur I sit there and can't believe you really exist._

 _This letter was so crap and none of this makes any sense. I think I'm losing my mind._

 _Ha. Ha ha ha. I am NEVER sending this._

 _James Potter_

* * *

 _Dear Heather,_

 _I know we've only known each other for a few months now, but I've been going a little crazy and I think I need to put how I'm feeling down on paper._

 _Here it goes. I fancy you. I really,_ _really_ _fancy you, and I haven't told anyone (except my cat, but I guess he doesn't really count because he can't respond in any way that isn't a derisive stare that makes me question my entire existence, also my diet because I think I'm eating too much sodium and I think my cat can tell, but I digress). I haven't even told Sirius how I feel about you, and I tell him everything. I have to, or he sulks for ages. I'm not even going to go into the Great Nando's Incident of 2017, suffice to say it was brutal. He threw a shoe at me._

 _I shouldn't be talking about Sirius, should I? That's not exactly romantic of me. Thing is, Heather, from the first day we met in Sport and PE (you know, when Heaney fainted in the middle of laps and you gave him your beanie to stem his blood flow like some sort of pro first responder), I've felt as if I've known you forever and I'm sure I've never met anyone as cool or as fun as you. You just so confident (and obviously gorgeous) and you make everyone feel at ease around you. I think it's amazing that you want to be a singer because you're so talented and I'm really happy for you that Vector cast you in Oklahoma! (I remembered the exclamation mark, I know how much it annoyed you when I forgot)_

 _Look, I know you're dating McNamee and in the spirit of total honesty I think he's a prat who doesn't deserve someone as amazing and as talented as you, but if he makes you happy it's cool, honestly) but I just wanted to get this down on paper. Don't worry, you'll probably never read this, unless you one day break up with McNamee and I suddenly grow a pair. I don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to telling people how I feel about them._

 _Anyway, break a leg, as they say in showbiz (only please don't really break your leg)_

 _James Potter_

* * *

 _Dear McGonagall,_

 _OH THE MOORS! The wild Scottish moors of thine ancestors! See how they linger in the mist! I would look really handsome in the mist, brooding my broody brood. You are the best Min. Look at us with our nicknames. I wish you were my mum. Or not my mum because my mum's cool. If we got married we could live there (in Scotland) and raise sheep on the cliffs and I'd be your toyboy husband. I know you're my English teacher but we can make it work. See I'm dead good at writing when I'm drunk and I have a dictionary so I know I got all the words right. Shawshank_ _Shankspeare_ _Shakespeare was good at that too._

 _Yours respectfully,_

 _James Lancelot Potter_


	2. Oof

**Chapter 1: Oof**

Whenever James Potter had a crush that felt as if it was spiralling wildly out of control, he wrote the girl a letter.

It was a tradition of his—a shameful, closely-guarded secret that he intended to take to his grave—which began when he was twelve-years-old, and a sneaky peak at one of his mother's many dog-eared Harlequin romance paperbacks provided him with the idea that writing a love letter to a young lady was an excellent way to win her affections.

Mila Janssen, with whom he had been smitten at the time, was very pretty, with long, dark hair and sparkly blue eyes. She smiled often and spoke with a slight accent, as she hadn't long moved from the Netherlands with her parents.

Mila Janssen was also eighteen-years-old, and babysat James when his mum and dad went to their weekly synchronised swimming class ("It keeps your father limber!") or the occasional date night at Midsummer House.

That complicated matters a little.

Still, even at his tender age, James was a firm believer in the power of love, which could overcome any obstacle and heal any wound. He would be a fully grown adult in a meagre six years, and Mila was a kind, thoughtful soul who always cut the crusts off his bacon sandwiches. He was sure that she'd be willing to wait.

He had no idea how to write a love letter, so he took to the internet for assistance. A quick Google search yielded a page of online love poem generators, so James selected the tenth result and added a couple of lines about bacon, lest Mila suspect that the poem did not come directly from his brain and go online to investigate. The end product was a letter that James was immediately prepared to take full credit for and seriously considered to be a work of unparalleled genius, guaranteed to make Mila Janssen fall madly in love with him.

Trouble was, the idea of handing the letter to her directly was out of the question. What if she read it in front of him? What if she rejected him to his face? James simply couldn't hack the idea of being shot down with such immediacy, and so he stole Mila's address from a stack of Christmas cards that his mother had left in her study, congratulating himself on his own mastery in the art of stealth. He fully intended to post his letter, too, until the very next night, when Mila came over to babysit and brought her boyfriend with her.

After that, her letter was consigned to a lonely shoebox—the once proud home of his favourite Reebok football boots—and shoved beneath his bed to gather dust.

He never expected that he'd wind up writing more.

* * *

Another day, another battle for Peter Pettigrew's soul.

It was a battle—painfully petty, and older than time itself—with only two participants.

Sirius Black was James's best friend in the world, his brother in all but blood, his most stalwart accomplice in all schemes, shenanigans and tomfooleries, and his housemate, as he'd been taken in by James's parents when he was sixteen-years-old. Sirius was often nihilistic, had a macabre sense of humour and firmly believed that there was no greater waste of time than romance—except for when it was the focus of a movie, because he was also a rom-com enthusiast.

James, on the other hand, was an optimistic, pun-making, sentimental sap, and Sirius got great mileage out of that.

Though he and Sirius were very different in many ways, they mostly found that their ideas and opinions were in alignment. Even the most perfect of friendships had their bumps, however, and situations would occasionally arise in which they found themselves at odds. When faced with such a rare conundrum, they would both proceed to draw their weapons, flattering, wheedling or bribing Peter—who was malleable and eager, unlike their friend Remus—to see their point of view, determined to recruit him to their side of the argument.

It was often pointless, because Remus would usually be forced to intervene and side with one of them for the sake of peace and quiet, and Peter would opt for whichever idea had the greater backing, but it didn't prevent them from running through the same old routine every time.

One such argument took place on a Friday evening in late September—an evening that was dull and uneventful and otherwise perfectly ordinary, but would one day be remembered by James Potter as the Night That Started It All—while he and his mates were hanging out in his bedroom. Sirius was in a dark mood, having argued with his younger brother at school that morning, while James was too busy playing with a Rubik's cube to pay attention to his glowering.

The Rubik's cube was a cruel, taunting thing that his mother had brought home as a gift after doing an escape room with his father and neglecting to invite James along. He had been trying for three straight weeks to defeat the blasted thing and everything it stood for, but victory persisted in eluding him.

"Put that thing down, would you?" Sirius barked, a sudden burst of impatience which followed a relatively happy half-hour of companionable silence. "The mere act of watching you fail is exhausting."

With a grunt of displeasure, James tossed the Rubik's cube aside. It bounced to the edge of his bed and lay still, gleaming innocently in the reddish light of his bedside lamp.

"It's rigged, anyway," he darkly claimed, "like the grabber machines at the arcade. You can't actually beat it."

Peter, who was lying on the carpeted floor, looked up from his graphic novel. "You know there are YouTube tutorials—"

"Get out," said James, his honour impugned, pointing at the door. "Get out of my room right now."

"D'you see this text in the footy group?" said Sirius, his voice cutting over Peter's laughter. "From McNamee?"

"I've got that group silenced for a reason," said Remus, who by James's reckoning hadn't looked up from his iPad since they'd gotten home from school.

"What does it say?" said Peter.

"Party at Macca Towers tonight." Sirius looked up and frowned. "What's Macca Towers?"

"It's what Evan McNamee calls his house," said Remus.

"What the fuck?" Sirius's upper lip curled in disgust. "Unless he lives in the McDonald's Corporation HQ, he's got no business calling his house 'Macca Towers.'"

"Yeah," James agreed, _"and_ it's totally misleading. He only lives in a semi-detached."

"Could you _not_ act so blatantly rich in conversation?" said Sirius, who was also very wealthy—even though he no longer saw his parents, thanks to a generous great uncle—but longed for the rain-drenched, poetically tragic confines of poverty in a way that only an ignorant rich boy could.

James scowled at him. "Get off the chaise lounge, if you've got a problem with it."

"With pleasure. I need to take a piss anyway," said Sirius, and sprang, agile as a dancer, to his feet. He stepped over Peter and made for the door of James's en-suite bathroom, mumbling under his breath. "Stupid bugger keeps a _chaise lounge_ in his bedroom, what kind of self-respecting—"

"Are we going to the party?" piped up Peter, as Sirius postured his way out of the room.

"Yes!" cried Sirius from the loo.

"No," said James.

"I'm confused," said Peter.

"McNamee is a prat and his party will be shit and I'm not going," said James flatly. "If you want to drink, we can do it here."

"Really?" said Remus, smirking slightly. "Raiding your mum's peppermint schnapps again?"

"I resent that. She also has Baileys Irish Cream."

"But you _like_ parties," said Peter mournfully. "I hate it when you guys make me choose!"

This was entirely true. James was generally a huge fan of parties. He'd even thrown one at the end of summer while his parents were away on a glamping weekend in South Wales. Of course, he was rumbled as soon as they got home and soundly punished, though even being forced to clean out their sprawling, cobwebby loft could not have compared to Algernon's rage when his favourite cat bed was found to be soaked in Heineken.

James had the distinct impression that his cat had not yet been fully mollified.

It had been worth it for the night that was in it, though. It had been such a laugh, and James _loved_ parties.

He just didn't love Evan McNamee.

"I do like parties," he said, leaning back against his headboard, stretching out his legs across his duvet—the bold red bedspread had recently replaced his Captain America sheets, because he was seventeen now, and his father had been seen shaking his head whenever he caught sight of them—and completely ignoring Peter's complaint, "but I'm not in the mood, yeah? Plus, we've still not started season 2 of _Pandemic_ _Legacy_ and I thought tonight might be a good night to start a few games—"

"Don't listen to him, Pete!" called Sirius immediately.

"Just once, I wish he'd shut the door when he was taking a wee," said Remus.

"Oh," said Peter, blinking rapidly, as if he were wondering if he should take offence at being so clearly bribed, then his round, ruddy face lit up with interest. "You know, I heard they've added infection-free havens, as well as a supply mechanic?"

"Yup. This time you're adding cubes, not removing them," James agreed, nodding. Though all four of them were certified board game fanatics, Peter was undoubtedly the biggest, and being a man of considerable wealth, James kept him very well supplied when he was in need of a fix. "Don't you want to save the world from a deadly virus again, Peter? Hear the people chant your name? Let them call you—" He lowered his brows dramatically. _"—hero?"_

"We've got the time to get a good few games in before we get tired, right?" said Peter eagerly. "Maybe we could order a pizza? It's my turn to—"

"Lucinda Zheng's going to the party," said Sirius, reappearing in the doorway. He waggled his phone in the air and tossed a smug smile at James, flicking his sleek black hair away from his face. "Got the confirmation right here."

Peter's eyes grew even wider, and in that moment, James knew the battle was lost. Peter would never pass up the chance to pine for Lucinda Zheng from afar, though it seemed entirely likely that Lucinda was completely unaware of his existence.

"You sly bastard," he said, shaking his head with begrudging admiration. "Well played."

"You really should have known," said Sirius, and flopped onto the chaise lounge with as much grace as he had risen, "lonely boners always trump the chance to be a hero."

* * *

James's crush on Mila Janssen dissipated on the day she left for uni, following a two-hour bout of crying in his bedroom that he felt sure was bound to last for the rest of his life.

Not long after his thirteenth birthday, Winifred Barnes moved in across the road.

Winnie was another older woman, though only by eight months this time. She was quick to joke and could outrun all the boys and she always painted her fingernails with glittery purple polish. Her hair was such a riotous mess of tumbling brown curls that she had to keep it short for the sake of convenience, and so she was affectionately nicknamed 'Bob Ross' by her family. That might have annoyed some girls, but Winnie only laughed. She wanted to be an artist, and took it as a compliment.

She and James were friends for a full year before it occurred to him that becoming her boyfriend was an avenue to consider, and that was even scarier than liking Mila Janssen. Mila was a fantasy, an unattainable dream girl, a woman who—he had eventually realised—would not in a million years have actually considered entering into a romance with a then twelve-year-old boy, but Winnie was a friend. She came to his house for dinner, kicked his ass at _Street Fighter II_ on his father's vintage Nintendo, told him secrets about herself that she shared with nobody else. There were stakes in this game and the stakes were high indeed.

Out came his pen once more, though this time, James decided against any auto-generated sentiments. It took him weeks of planning, a dozen different attempts, a fraught conversation with his cat and countless hours of agonizing self-doubt before he'd finished a draft that he deemed satisfactory… only for James to immediately decide that Winnie was too good a friend to risk, and into the shoebox it went.

Six months later, during a post-football, pre-cinema lunch, Winnie leaned across the table, took his hand in hers and told him, very seriously, that she was into girls.

He was the first person she told, in fact.

That made him immensely proud.

* * *

The pact that James had made with himself when he first started to fancy Heather Jordan consisted of one very important rule: tell nobody.

In theory, this was an excellent rule—by keeping his feelings to himself, he wasn't bothering his mates and they weren't bothering him in retaliation—but in practice it ran the risk of leading to awkward situations, such as the one James found himself in when Sirius got his bloody way and dragged them all to Evan McNamee's impromptu house party.

To make matters worse, Heather made a beeline for James as soon as he walked into McNamee's cramped, smoky living room and threw her arms around his shoulders. That wasn't particularly surprising because Heather was a hugger, and James had lost count of the number of embraces he'd enjoyed in the seven months he'd known her, but the feeling of her arms around him never failed to make his pulse quicken and that was awkward, because her boyfriend and his mates were sitting only feet away.

In a lot of ways, fancying a friend was more difficult than fancying another girl from afar. Heather had no idea how he felt and loved being his mate, so she continued to do and say things that made it difficult for James to believe he stood a chance of getting over her.

"I'm glad you're here!" she said brightly, once she'd pulled away and dropped her hands to her sides. She smiled at him, revealing a set of perfect white teeth beneath her pink-painted lips. She was carrying an empty glass in one hand, and eyelashes were longer and curlier than usual. "Parties are so _boring_ without you."

Things like that, for example.

"Yeah, well," he said, annoyed with himself for not coming up with something brilliantly witty, "I thought I'd show my face."

"I was starting to think you weren't coming."

"Almost didn't," James admitted, "I'm a very busy man, you know. Got a lot of balls in the air."

Heather snorted. "Balls? Really?"

"What?" He adopted an innocent expression. "It's very childish of you to laugh at balls."

"You're the one who brought them up."

"Those balls were metaphorical," he countered, grinning, and Heather snorted again. "How is it _my_ fault that you've got your head in the gutter?"

"It is your fault, actually, because I never—" She jumped, startled, at the sound of glass shattering, followed by a raucous, mocking cheer. "What the hell—?"

"Hubbard," said James, pointing, and Heather spun around to look. Eira Hubbard had dropped a bottle on the floor and was bending down to clean it, blushing furiously, while McNamee and his mates jeered her from the sofa.

"That's awful," said Heather sadly, "somebody should help her."

"Oh, right. Yeah, we should—"

"It's a good thing that you _did_ come, honestly," she continued, and turned back to James with a world-weary sigh. She pointed over her shoulder at the sofa. "See who I've been stuck hanging out with? I would have had to kill you if you'd skipped out on tonight."

"That bad, are they?"

She gave a quick, jerking little shrug. "Evan's friends are dicks."

 _Shame his excellent taste in women doesn't extend to his taste in friends,_ James wanted to say.

He also wanted to tell her that she looked incredible in her dress, which was held up on one shoulder and splashed with a print of bright, colourful flowers that distinguished her from the rest of the crowd, and that he liked her _so_ much, and that he'd be a much better boyfriend to her than McNamee, who was completely undeserving and had a terrible band of mates.

Not that James had ever had a proper girlfriend—much as he hated, at seventeen, to admit that—but it couldn't have been that difficult to treat a girl nicely.

Instead, he told her, "That's a shame."

"It's fine, I mostly ignore them." Luckily for James, Heather could have carried on a conversation with a brick wall, should there have been a need for it, and she often didn't require much input from him. "It's just, like, annoying because I turned up early to help Evan get set up and Nick was already here and it's like, I'd like some time to be alone with _my_ boyfriend and also don't be so obvious, yeah?"

"Obvious?"

"Oh, it's going to sound so arrogant if I say it..."

"It won't, don't worry."

"—it's just that _I think Nick fancies me,"_ she said, leaning in closer, lowering her voice to a whisper on the last few words. "I mean, he's always staring at me and he's _always_ around and—I mean, I can't prove it and I'm _obviously_ not going to say anything to Ev because he'll get so upset. He's crazy jealous," she added, and though she did so with a roll her eyes, she sounded almost as if she was proud of it. "Anyway, d'you want a drink? There's loads in the kitchen."

"Er," said James, feeling quite alarmed by the barrage of information she'd just volleyed at him, particularly—having just been ambushed with an affectionate hug, and given the amount of empty shot glasses on the coffee table next to her plainly tipsy boyfriend—the stuff about McNamee's jealous streak. "Maybe he's after your man?"

Heather's eyebrows lowered. "What?"

"Nick Crabtree," said James, glancing warily at the sofa. McNamee and his ilk were still laughing at Eira Hubbard and hadn't seemed to notice that James was there. "Maybe it's actually McNamee he fancies, and he only stares at you a lot because he's jealous."

"Oh," said Heather softly.

"I wasn't serious, or anything, it was only—"

"Is it really that hard to believe that someone might fancy me?" she asked him, frowning.

"What?" James's eyes grew wide, and his heart gave a whopping great bang against his chest, the rate of its pounding accelerating immediately, as if it was running in terror from a chainsaw-wielding maniac. "No! Of course isn't! You're—I was only saying that because—"

But Heather had already started to laugh, tipping her head back, her glass swinging haphazardly in her hand.

"I'm _joking,_ you idiot," she said as she righted herself, then laughed again at his panicked expression. "You're so _easy,_ Jimmy, honestly. It's why I love you."

James expelled a breath of relief, though the adrenaline in his body couldn't dissipate quickly enough for his heart rate to slow down accordingly, nor could he help but feel a little irritated.

"I'm not easy," he argued, trying to sound as if he wasn't bothered and only just succeeding.

"You are a _bit_ easy," Heather countered, still giggling. She held out her empty glass. "If you're going for a drink, could you get me another vodka and cherry Coke? I need to run to the loo."

"Er… sure?" he said, and allowed her to press her glass into his hand.

"Thanks, babe," said Heather, and patted his arm before she dashed off. "You're the best!"

James went to the kitchen and did as he was asked, and when he returned to the living room, beer bottle in one hand and Heather's vodka and Coke in the other, he found her on the sofa with her legs thrown over McNamee's lap, snogging him with an enthusiasm that suggested a spirited attempt to eat the lower half of his face.

He set her drink on the table and walked back out of the room.

* * *

Lily Evans felt like a cardiac arrest.

James wasn't quite sure where the obsession began, and it _was_ an obsession, despite his own repeated protests in the face of his friends' accusations. They really couldn't be blamed for the jabs and jokes they lobbed at him like tiny paper planes, because James talked about her constantly, and it drove them all half-spare.

He thought about her more. Dreamed about her often. Pined for her like a hopeless, lovelorn fool.

One day, he was fine—a perfectly sane fourteen-year-old who had fun with his mates and a life without stress—and the next she consumed him. Like an emerald-eyed, flame-haired Siren, determined to lure him to an early and tragic demise, Lily Evans caught him on the wind and refused to let him go. Their brief and infrequent interactions were dissected and examined like laboratory mice, the mention of her name set his heart to pounding, he lost countless evenings to torrid, detailed fantasies that sustained him as much as they brought him shame, and James really believed that he loved her. He really, truly did.

Loving Lily Evans was exhausting and frightening and painful, and his father had never prepared him for that when he'd sat James down for the Talk, which led James to believe that _nobody_ could ever understand how much and how deeply he felt.

 _Her_ letter wasn't a calculated effort, but a rushed, intense disaster that he somehow spilled on a page, a cacophony of frustrated feelings that were all pent up and had nowhere else to go, because James never had hope for him and Lily Evans. James did not exist on the same level as Lily Evans, and he would have bet his life that there was no reality in which he might have asked her out and gotten the answer he wanted. He wrote that letter because he might have exploded otherwise, veins popped, heart splattered, blood splashed across his bedroom wall.

He wrote that letter with no intent besides getting his feelings _out_ of his tightly-wound body, and he almost died of humiliation and shame when he forced himself to read it the next morning.

His prepubescent, internet-provided poem was far less embarrassing.

Still, he had paid Mila Janssen and Winifred Barnes the respect of a place in the shoebox, and his badly-worded ode to Lily Evans—shining, beautiful, whip-smart girl of his dreams—did not deserve to be tossed aside like garbage. She should have had a space of her own, really, but nothing was good enough, and at least she'd have company with the other two girls.

He addressed the letter before he hid it away, though if pressed, he would have argued that he couldn't explain his decision in words. It just seemed proper that way—her name and address printed neatly on the envelope, forming a sharp contrast to the hastily scrawled slop the letter contained—tucked away in his shoebox next to Winnie and Mila, and never to see the light of day.

That crush took the better part of two years to burn out.

Or maybe James had been the one to grow tired.

He'd never really decided.

* * *

After leaving Heather to suck her boyfriend's mouth dry, James ventured upstairs in search of Sirius and found him in front of the television in McNamee's bedroom—covered in Chelsea posters, of course, because McNamee was a dick—sandwiched on the bed between Remus and Beatrice Booth, playing _Fortnite_ on the PS4.

"Seriously?" he cried, lifting his hands in the air. "We could have played this at home!"

"Yeah, with peppermint schnapps instead of real booze," said Sirius dryly, hammering at the controller like he was attempting to punch straight through it with his thumb. "Sit down, would you? You're standing in the way of the telly."

"I'm nowhere near the telly."

"Then your perpetual bitching is standing in the way of the telly."

"If you want better booze, we'll buy some on the way home," he offered. This was actually possible, as Peter had turned eighteen not a week before.

"No, I'm in the zone," said Sirius, and didn't lift his eyes from the screen. "Remus, ask James what crawled up his arse and died today."

"Ask him yourself," said Remus.

"I'm not prepared to surrender my shot at victory because my best mate's having a whinge. You deal with him, and I'll take over when it's your turn to play."

"You _say_ you'll take over, but we both know you won't, and I'll end up spending the whole night listen—there's someone over there." Remus pointed at the television. "Right there."

"Where?"

"To the—no, turn around, to the _left,_ just ducked behind that hut."

"Wow," said Beatrice listlessly, "you're both such caring friends."

Then she looked up at James, who had just noticed a bunch of photos of Heather pinned to the corkboard on the wall above McNamee's dresser, and was trying to contend with a painful, nauseating feeling that was twisting in the pit of his stomach.

"You alright?" she asked him.

He shrugged in response. "Where are your mates?"

"Downstairs." She patted the spare inch of duvet beside her, and James—not wanting to be rude—sat down next to her, his arse half-hanging off the edge of the bed. "Don't tell them I'm up here, though. I'm technically not allowed to play."

"Did you parents ban you from playing?"

"Nah, my parents don't care, but Lily says it 'changes my personality,' or something," said Bea, making quote-marks with her fingers. "She's the one who told me that I had to stop playing."

James pulled a face. "That's a weird thing for a mate to say."

"Oh, no, she was totally right—I was losing out on so much sleep at the height of my obsession, and I can get _really_ aggressive on not much sleep." She lifted her hands as if to admit defeat. "Are you going to drink that beer?"

"Yes I am," he said quickly, and downed a mouthful at once.

Booth wasn't exactly a friend of his, but James couldn't realistically categorise her as an acquaintance, either. He'd only recently gotten to know her, thanks to Remus, who had brought her along to a handful of RPG Sundays, but she was cool, and funny, and though James privately believed that she had a thing for Remus, he didn't dare voice his suspicions, and they got along just fine.

"So," he said, and dropped the bottle from his lips, "are you playing after Sirius?"

"Oh, no." Bea shook her head. "Observation only. Possibly cheerleading, once Sirius stops hogging the controller and lets Remus have a go. It's like an alternative to cold turkey, yeah? Easing me out of my addiction."

"Fair enough," said James. "Is it working?"

"Not one bit. Sirius is literally the worst player I've ever seen. I'm actually considering sitting on my hands to keep myself from grabbing the controller and fixing his mess—"

"Oi!" Sirius cried.

"How on earth do you _live_ with that clown?" Beatrice concluded. "He can't play _Fortnite,_ can't handle being made fun of, can't even GM for shit—"

"I officially expel you from the guild," said Sirius. "Remus, I'm officially expelling her from the guild."

"Ooh, expelling me from the guild, you edgy bastard," Bea dryly replied, and James laughed. "You owe me the rest of your beer for that, Potter."

"Can't even argue it," said James, and handed over the bottle. "To the victor goes the spoils."

Between chatting to Booth and laughing openly at his mates, who were both equally lacking in _Fortnite_ skills—though Remus was more open to being teased about it—James managed to cheer up considerably in the hour that followed, though he found his eyes drifting towards McNamee's photos of Heather on more than one occasion, and felt the same sickening pain in his stomach whenever he did so.

At one point, he considered giving in to Booth's repeated requests to let her try his glasses on so that he wouldn't have to see them, but then he'd have to explain why he wasn't in a rush to take them back.

Besides which, not looking at photos of the girl he fancied didn't seem like a good enough reason to be willingly blind for a prolonged period of time.

He could have happily sat up there all night, but eventually, Sirius ran out of the bottles he'd squirrelled upstairs and bade James—the only one present with no real investment in the game they were playing—to fetch drinks for everyone. He would have protested, but Booth had finished his beer and he was starting to grow thirsty, so he told them all he'd be back in a minute and left the room, his spirits much higher than they had been all evening, and barrelled down the staircase two steps at a time.

When he reached the bottom step, he grabbed hold of the banister to swing himself around and dismount the stairs. It was a swift, smooth transition that he'd perfected a hundred times over in his own home, but the universe hated James today, so it was no surprise that he suddenly found himself hurtling, Tarzan-like, directly into the path of Lily Evans.

"Agh!" he cried out, like some kind of idiot, as if that might add any value to this tragic and humiliating situation. Having propelled himself around the banister at top speed, he was utterly powerless to stop his momentum, and the ensuring collision was so forceful that it knocked the poor girl over. She landed on her bottom with a soft thud and a high-pitched cry of surprise, and James could only be thankful that the music blaring from the kitchen and the lack of witnesses in the hall would shield her from any embarrassment. Only _he_ deserved to be embarrassed by this sorry display.

James might not have fancied Lily Evans any longer, but there remained in his possession a few lingering, nostalgic strands of affection for the memory of his feelings, and she'd never been anything but pleasant to him, so it was mortifying to think that he'd caused her any kind of pain.

Also, knocking women on their arses was not a habit he wanted to cultivate.

"I'm sorry!" he yelped, and staggered to the left, wishing he were as drunk as he must have appeared, so that he could explain this all away. "Sorry, I'm so sorry! Are you okay? I didn't mean—"

"I'm fine, you lunatic," said Evans, shaking her long red hair out of her face. She stretched her hand out towards him. "Do you think you could put a pin in your mental breakdown and help me up?"

"Oh god, of course I should help you up, where are my manners?" he babbled. "I swear my mum raised me better than this. I should have offered, and I swear I haven't—"

 _"Seriously,_ Potter?"

"Oh, shit, sorry." He clasped her hand and helped her pull herself to her feet, wincing apologetically when she straightened up and let out a sudden hiss of pain. "I've got you, up we go."

His face felt so hot that he could have fried an egg on his forehead.

Lily dropped his hand and tentatively prodded her lower back with her fingers. "You training for the Olympics or something?"

"I'm so sorry," he said, wishing he were a real wizard—not a stupid teenage boy who pretended to be one on Sundays—so that he could disappear on the spot. "I'm so, _so_ sorry. I'm such a prat and I wasn't even—are you okay? I didn't hurt you, or—fuck, Evans, I'm really sorry."

"Calm down," she said. "I'm already said I'm fine, didn't I?"

"Yeah but—but now you seem like you might still be hurt, and what about internal bleeding?"

"Internal bleed—" This seemed to stump her to such an extent that she couldn't get the word out, and she frowned at him like she thought he might be crazy. "You hit me with your _body,_ not an American muscle car."

James resisted the urge to laugh. That would have been impolite. Or perhaps it wouldn't have. It was best to err on the side of caution. "So, you're not hurt?"

"I mean, my arse is pretty sore, but you don't need to call an ambulance, nor should you need to consult your solicitor."

"I don't have a solicitor," he said. "I mean, I'm pretty sure my parents do, but—"

"There you are!" came a voice from behind Lily's head, and a moment later, Mary Macdonald appeared, wobbling towards them in a pair of heels that should have been banned as a safety hazard. Her hand closed around Lily's wrist as she came to a halt beside her. "Wendy said you were leaving?"

"What?" Evans looked down at her wrist, then back up at Mary. "Yes, I am."

"Noooooo, that isn't fair," Mary whined. She was clearly a little worse for wear. James was sure he'd spotted her drinking directly from a bottle of Grenache when he'd walked in earlier. "You can't leave yet!"

"Yes, I can."

"But _why?"_

"Because I didn't _want_ to come in the first place, remember?"

"Yeah, but I thought you'd cheer up when you got here."

"I don't need cheering up, and even if I did, why on earth would you bring me here, of all places?" Lily gently extracted her arm from Macdonald's grasp. "Evan McNamee is an absolute prick—"

"Kingsley's not even _here."_

"—and this whole party's shit anyway."

"It's not shit!"

"It _is_ completely shit, to be fair," James heard himself say, and two pairs of eyes—one blue, one brilliantly green—snapped onto his face. "I wish _I_ could leave. Did you split up with Shacklebolt?"

Evans stared at him in disbelief for a moment, then pressed her lips together as if she might laugh, but Macdonald narrowed her eyes.

"It's really fucking rude to pry into other people's business, Potter," she said icily, "not to mention insensitive. Why would you bring that up right in front of her?"

"I'm not—" James began, frowning. How had he wound up in this situation? Why had he even spoken? Should he admit to what he'd just done and feign an obsessive interest in taking Evans to the hospital? She'd said that she was fine, but internal bleeding was no joke. "But you—you were the one who brought him up in the first—"

"He's not prying," said Evans, "he's asking, don't be such an arse."

"He's the one who's eavesdropping."

"How can he be eavesdropping when I was talking to him first?"

"Just for the record," said James, before Macdonald could reply, "I have absolutely no idea what's going on right now."

Mary's mouth fell open in disgust, but Evans laughed for real as she began to dig through her handbag.

"Potter can eavesdrop all he wants if he's going to take my side," she said as she pulled out her phone, pressed the home button and swiped her thumb across the screen. "The app says that my taxi's already outside, so I have to go before I piss off the driver. You said you wanted to leave, yeah?" she added, looking up at James.

"Oh, I—er." He blinked at her. "Yeah?"

"You live on Cavendish Avenue, right? My house is on Cowper, so we can split the taxi if you want."

Somewhere, buried very deep in the dark recesses of his mind, James's fifteen-year-old self began to scream in silent victory.

A year ago, if Evans had made an offer like that, his head would have exploded.

Even now, with his obsession abated, it was a really tempting offer. James had never wanted to go to McNamee's stupid party in the first place, and the whole place stank of weed and despair, and even though all three of his mates were spending the night at his house, Sirius had his own key. They all knew his address, and they'd all be able to get back in one piece without him.

"Are you sure?" he said.

Evans didn't even blink. "I offered, didn't I?"

"Right, well…" This night was starting to ascend to an all-new level of surreal. Him and Lily Evans, casually sharing a taxi to their respective homes, his apparent reward for knocking her flat on her arse. "Yeah, I suppose, that sounds—"

At the other end of the hall, the door to the living room burst open, and Heather Jordan emerged, giggling drunkenly and missing one shoe, but still decidedly gorgeous in her flower-print dress, with strands of long, dark hair escaping her neat ponytail.

James's heart gave a weak, tortured little flip when she caught sight of him and let out a delighted squeal.

"You!" she cried, and darted unsteadily towards him. "I've been looking for you, you big meanie!"

"You've been— _meanie?"_ he repeated, confused, but all objections to this moniker melted away when Heather slipped her hand inside his.

"Yeah, meanie, I was looking for you and you abandoned me," she said, and threw in an adorable pout, in case James hadn't already been sufficiently broken. "You need to come with me, though, we're playing Ring of Fire."

"I don't really—" he began, and looked at Evans, who had cocked an eyebrow at him, but Heather was already tugging at his hand, urging him back towards the living room. "Um, right, I'm not sure—"

"Alcohol poisoning's more appealing, yeah?" said Evans, looking amused.

Something like guilt curled up in his insides. "I mean, thanks for the offer?"

"Don't worry about it," she replied, with an easy smile which told James that she'd forget his face the very instant she set foot outside the house. "Have fun and don't run with scissors."

"I promise I won't!" he called back. "Get home safe, okay?"

Then Heather dragged him into the living room, thus concluding the longest conversation James had ever had with Lily Evans.

The only conversation they'd ever have, probably.

* * *

James was a few months shy of his seventeenth birthday when he came back to school after Christmas break and discovered that Lily Evans had a boyfriend.

A year before, it probably would have destroyed him, but by then it merely ached a little.

Still, James never would have imagined that it would be Kingsley Shacklebolt—he of the deep voice, universally fancied by at least half of the school, already more ripped than any bloke his age had any right to be—and his newfound romance with Lily, mixed with a healthy dose of weariness and dejection, that would finally put an end to his tired, flagging feelings.

A month-and-a-half later—on Valentine's Day, of all days—Heather Jordan transferred to the school.

Heather was a cat of another colour altogether, mostly because she lit upon James in Sport and PE and demanded that he keep her company, which meant that he'd had more meaningful conversations with her at the end of one week than he had with Lily Evans in several collective years. Heather was vibrant and brimming with confidence—hers was the kind of beauty that was far too obvious anyone to miss, least of all the woman herself—and she had big ambitions, as well as the talent to achieve them. She claimed James as a mate immediately, started calling him "babe," laughed hysterically whenever he cracked a joke, and had him so convinced that she liked him back, he made a solid decision to ask her—face-to-face, no letters required—to accompany him on a date.

But before he had a chance to work out how to do it, and because he had shit for luck, Heather started dating Evan McNamee.

Evan-bleeding-McNamee, who by all accounts was a loud, twattish, floppy-haired prick who referred to his father as "daddy" and bragged at football about the girls he'd fingered. He'd cheated on his last two girlfriends, or so James had heard. He didn't know if Heather knew that, but it wasn't his place to tell her.

Unlike his crush on Lily, which was already on its last legs when Kingsley came on the scene, James's feelings for Heather were fresher than a daisy, so her involvement with McNamee couldn't kill them stone dead. His letter to her was an exercise in catharsis, but it was also carefully crafted—less drafts than Winnie's, but one of many, nonetheless. He wrote it on a sweltering summer night, after he and his mates and Heather and her "boo" had hung out at the cinema, tossed it in the shoebox with the others, and felt better, at least, for getting it all off his chest.

That didn't make it easier to see her snogging McNamee.

If anything, it only made it worse.

* * *

Opting to stay at the party, rather than take the lifeline he'd been thrown and cut his losses early, only exacerbated James's bad mood for the rest of the night. The very second his arse hit the floor—directed there by Heather, plopped between Peter and Horrible Helena Hodge—he realised that he should have gone with Evans instead.

Sharing a taxi with her might have been fun. She'd been nice to him and defended him from Mary's wrath, even though he'd knocked her down and possibly shattered her coccyx bone. Since he'd moved past his insane infatuation, James had managed on several occasions to string a sentence together whilst in her presence, and it would have been nice to one day look back on his time at school and say that he'd had at least one lengthy conversation with the girl who had unwittingly dominated his life for almost two years.

He really hoped that her coccyx bone _hadn't_ been shattered. She'd _seemed_ fine, but James had read something online about how redheads had a higher pain threshold than other people, so it was possible that she had suffered a serious injury and didn't even realise. The floor in McNamee's hall was a cold, hard laminate masquerading as wood, as opposed to a soft carpet, which may have cushioned her fall.

With that worrying thought in his head, James proceeded to get well and truly smashed.

It wasn't his fault, he told himself, when he drew the three of clubs and had to down the tequila Heather had poured out for him, nor was it his choice. Heather wanted him to play, and he was powerless to refuse her.

He drank a lot more after that, more tequila, more beer, and rum, and vodka, and other drinks he couldn't even recognise, and everything just got worse and worse as the night went on. It was like a horrible, slowed-down nightmare—his body was definitely starting to collapse in on itself, the girl he fancied kept snogging McNamee right in front of him, eventually taking his hand and disappearing upstairs with a sly wink for James that said _I'm about to have sex with my cretinous boyfriend and I'll never, ever want you, you stupid, pathetic virgin,_ he spied Peter getting off with Helena Hodge under the kitchen table, and he couldn't be sure but he thought he might have killed Lily Evans earlier—and by the time somebody grabbed his sleeve and dragged him outside to a waiting taxi, James was sure that he was drunk, dead, or about to be arrested.

"I'm giving up on women," he told Remus, as the taxi moved off. It must have been really late, because the radio was on but there was no music playing, just the nonsense cooing of a woman doing tarot card readings to callers who wanted to know if they would meet the loves of their lives soon. "Don't arrest me."

"I won't?" said Remus, frowning at him. "How much _did_ you drink when you went downstairs?"

Remus looked very confused, which was very worrying because Remus always knew what to do, so James lifted a hand and ran it over his friend's face.

"Thanks," said Remus.

"Mon capitaine," James told him, in low, soothing tones, "everything's gonna be fine."

In the front seat of the taxi, Sirius had already started to snore.

"Helena gave me her number!" piped up Peter excitedly, from the other side of Remus.

This information was not relevant to James because Helena Hodge was the worst, so he disregarded it immediately.

"I think I killed Lily Evans," he said airily, then he leaned forward, struck by sudden inspiration. The motion made his stomach lurch unpleasantly, and he felt a mouthful of something foul travel up his throat, but he swallowed it back down. "Hey, hey, driver?"

"It's a £250 fine for getting sick in the taxi," said the unkind, unfeeling taxi driver.

"Did you bring Lily Evans home earlier?" James asked him, ignoring both the threat and the impending doom sloshing around in his innards. "D'you know Lily Evans? Red hair, very beautiful, about the same height as my mum?"

"I'll be having words with your mum if you throw up in this taxi."

"Did _anyone_ hear me say that Helena gave me her number?"

"Don't you have _any_ respect for the dead?" James cried at the driver, then looked at Remus, panic-stricken. "I didn't really kill her, did I?"

If he really had killed Lily Evans, he would have to hand himself into the authorities and plead guilty at his trial, serving anything between 2-10 years for involuntary manslaughter—probably less, because he was a minor—though he would certainly deserve a life sentence for snuffing out the light of one so young. The justice system was a tarnished cog in this machine called life.

"James, if you _had_ managed to murder a woman in a house full of people, somebody would have noticed," said Remus flatly.

"You're right," he said, and flopped back in his seat. "Seemed like a stretch anyway."

Sirius let out a snore that sounded like a wildebeest had burrowed into the taxi.

"Again," said Peter, sounding angry now, "Helena gave me her number, _and_ she let me feel her boob. Is nobody going to congratulate me?"

"So?" said James, staring out the window at the passing houses. "I thought you fancied Zheng? Get back to me when you get a number from someone who isn't a psycho, like Zheng, or Macdonald, or—" Or Heather Jordan, he thought, with a pang. "—or McGonagall."

Peter snorted. _"McGonagall."_

"What?! I'm serious!" he cried, offended. Minerva McGonagall was the best damn English teacher that the British Isles had to offer. If _she_ were a cog, she would be shiny and new, and the machine would run efficiently with only her input. "What's your problem?"

"My problem?" squeaked Peter incredulously. James couldn't see him because he was slumped backwards in his seat and he no longer believed that he was capable of sitting up straight, but he imagined that Pete's face was growing redder and redder. "You insult _Helena_ when your idea of a decent bird is a sixty-year-old—"

"Early forties at the _most,"_ James retorted. "And at least McGonagall never stalked one of my mates."

"That was _years_ ago!"

"Yet I still bear the scars."

"What scars?"

"The emotional variety." James balled one hand into a fist and held it to his heart. "You have no idea how it feels to be stalked, Peter, you're not as beautiful as I, you simply couldn't—"

"Jesus Christ," said the taxi driver, and turned the radio to its highest volume, "if I hear one more word out of you, you four-eyed git, I'll throw you out on your arse."

James opened his mouth to argue, but found it covered by Remus's hand.

"So sorry," said Remus, sounding genial and sober and generally trustworthy, "he won't say another word, I promise."

Talking back to a taxi driver was one thing, but James would never—not even drunk, not even if he truly were a hardened criminal—wilfully disappoint Remus, so he fell silent for the rest of the trip.

Mercifully, the ride was a short one, because Evan McNamee only lived a few miles away, but James's luck ran out when the taxi pulled up in front of his house. As if she'd been summoned by magic, the front door was thrown open and his mother appeared, wrapped tightly in her favourite dressing gown, and though the light from the hallway formed a warm, golden halo around her dark head, her expression was in no way benevolent.

"Oh, shit," said Sirius, who had jerked awake when the car stopped. "Rumbled."

"It's okay," said James, clumsily unbuckling his seat belt, "just be cool. She'll never know."

Then he opened the door and promptly fell out, landing painfully on the pebbled drive while Sirius's hysterical laughter burst into the night air with the force of a rampaging firework.

James had believed, only hours earlier, as his throat had burned from too much tequila and he watched Evan McNamee stick his tongue down Heather's throat, that his night couldn't possibly get any worse, but this latest development may just have been a brand new low.

At least, he thought, as he and his mates were being herded up the stairs like a gang of unruly animals, he probably hadn't killed Lily Evans.


	3. Deluge

**Author's Note:** This chapter was meant to have more scenes, but the two it features ran on super long, and I really liked the neatness of the ending, so all in all I'm pretty happy leaving it as it is

 **Chapter 2: Deluge**

Peter and Remus had already gone home when James woke up the next day.

"Peter's mum came to pick him up an hour ago," his mother informed him, after she'd strode into his bedroom and whipped his duvet into the air, leaving James shivering on his mattress in his boxer shorts and not much else. "That was at _noon,_ James. One is generally expected to be up and dressed by noon, not lying comatose like a wounded snot."

"I'm hungover," James moaned, his eyes shut tight against the daylight, reaching out for a duvet that wasn't there.

"What you are is rude, leaving your friends to sit around downstairs while you sleep in."

"I resent the comparison to a wounded snot."

"Yet leaving behind a legacy of insolence doesn't bother you at all," said his mother dryly. "It's the middle of the day, James. Get up, get dressed and put something in your stomach before I throw cold water over your head."

James knew his mother too well to take her threat lightly.

He also knew that he was still in the doghouse, and quite rightly so, because he'd ignored her calls all night and tumbled home at 3 a.m., missing a mutually agreed-upon curfew by three whole hours. Euphemia saw no issue in allowing her son to go to parties, nor did she mind if he came home from those parties drunk—in fact, she often covered for Remus and Peter, who had far stricter curfews, when they found themselves a little the worse for wear—but when James had the audacity to break a deal they'd struck, her fury could be terrible to behold.

Punishment was coming. Much like winter, but Westeros had powerful, beautiful women like his dream girl, Sansa Stark, while James had nothing but his mother, who was deadly serious in her intent to storm the offices of HBO with a flaming torch if Cersei Lannister didn't win out in the end.

He tried to will himself to go back to sleep, but Euphemia started moving around his room, shuffling through his things and singing Boney M's "Rasputin" at the top of her lungs, so it was no use. James wasn't strong enough to withstand the combined forces of his mother _and_ Russia's greatest love machine.

He rolled out of bed and onto the floor, all the better to protest his mother's cruelty.

"My pride and joy," said Euphemia, coming to stand over him as he lay prone on his back, staring up at the vague outline of the glow-in-the-dark stars he'd stuck to his ceiling as a child. Without his glasses, his mother's face was a blur. "I don't think I've ever felt more privileged to have expelled you from my birth canal than I do at this very moment."

Then she dropped a pair of jeans on his head.

"It should weigh heavily on you that you've forced me to resort to this," he heard her say, while he spluttered in outrage and shook them off. "You have a singularly beautiful face, and it pains me deeply to throw clothes at it."

"Then don't," he grumbled, and sat up straight, reaching to his nightstand for his glasses.

"Where's the fun in that?" she said, then turned away to leave, marching from his room with her nose thrust in the air. _"For the queen he was no wheeler dealer, though she'd heard the things he'd done…"_

 _"She believed he was a holy healer,"_ James sang under his breath, then scowled to himself.

Bloody hangover. Bloody parents. Bloody Russian mystics.

Once he'd showered and dressed, venturing downstairs for food did nothing to improve his mood. His mother was bustling around the kitchen, humming to herself, and while his father was there at the breakfast bar, as placid as ever as he slurped his beloved lunchtime avgolemono—one of Euphemia's specialties—with his nose buried in his phone, Sirius was also present, pumped up with Schadenfreude and grinning like a dick.

"Hark!" he cried, when James slouched into the kitchen, dragging his feet across the terracotta tiles. "The Chosen One arises!"

"Shut up," said James.

"Don't be rude to your brother," Euphemia scolded, whipping past him with a steaming mug of coffee in her hand. "There's soup on the stove if you're hungry."

"I don't want soup," said James, who also loved avgolemono, but didn't want to give his mother the satisfaction. "I want a bacon sandwich."

"Then make yourself a bacon sandwich!" she called over her shoulder, disappearing into the den.

Scowling, James went to the fridge and opened it, only to find that there was no bacon.

"Oh yeah," Sirius drawled. "Peter ate the rest of the bacon this morning. He was wounded by your harsh mistreatment, so your mother cooked the lot for him."

"Why tell me to bloody make some if she knew there wasn't any left?" James huffed, and slammed the fridge door shut.

"Your mother has been slighted online by someone named RumbelleGal96, and is quite upset about it," said his father as James turned around, looking up from his phone. As usual, Fleamont's scruffy hair had been combed, gelled and flattened to within an inch of its life, but was already beginning to ease back into its natural state of disarray. "We must do our best to support her in her hour of need."

James could barely contain an eyeroll. His mother was obsessed with a television show about fairytale characters and it made no sense to him at all, not least because the show was no longer on the air. She frequently annoyed everyone with her incessant gushing about the main character and some dopey pirate, and since Sirius had introduced her to Twitter, she had begun a new hobby of getting into fights online with people who did not share her love of that particular couple.

Sirius, of course, encouraged this behaviour, often making suggestions or getting involved in the fights with any one of a multitude of troll accounts he had in his possession. He said he found no greater pleasure in life than watching Euphemia roast teenage girls online.

"How about, instead of forcing us to support her, she stops getting involved in Twitter wars with people who don't agree with her opinions?" he suggested.

"They are _wrong!"_ Euphemia cried from the den. "They are wrong and they deserve to be told!"

James wasn't stupid enough to argue back. A Twitter spat would never upset his mother, who was too old and clever to let herself be bested by anyone, even though he couldn't understand why a fifty-nine-year-old woman would happily waste her time feuding with kids online. He knew the real reason for her mood was her only son's insubordination. She likely hadn't thought of a good enough punishment to cheer herself up yet.

She would, though. Euphemia always did, just as she always managed to strike when he least expected.

"I wonder what revenge she'll dream up this time," he said quietly, and opened the fridge again.

"If it makes you feel any better, I got a full-blown lecture this morning," said Sirius. "She said she hadn't taken me in just to see me saunter into the house at all hours of the morning like a common prostitute, and should she be expecting Richard Gere to stop by soon."

"Good," said James, contemplating the contents of the fridge.

"She also said that I'm too thin and frail to protect myself from gangsters," Sirius continued, sounding mildly disgusted. _"Gangsters,_ mind, the kind that wear trilbys and carry Tommy guns. That's who she thinks poses the greatest threat to my safety, out here on the mean streets of suburban Cambridge."

James grunted noncommittally as he removed a bottle of ketchup and a carton of milk from the fridge, then knocked it shut with his elbow.

"Oh," Sirius added, "and she said that we were leading sweet young Remus down a dark path."

James slid the bottle of ketchup across the countertop near the bread bin and set the milk down next to it, then turned to fix Sirius with a disbelieving look. "No, she didn't."

"Yes, she did. Right in front of him, too."

"And what did Remus say?"

"He agreed with her," said Sirius. "Found it well funny."

"Of course he did," James sighed, as he doused a slice of bread with a liberal helping of ketchup and slapped a second slice on top of it. With his lunch prepared, he poured himself a glass of milk, returned the items to the fridge and sloped over to the breakfast bar, plonking himself on the stool closest to Sirius.

His father looked up from his phone as James sat down, regarding the snack in his hand from beneath lowered brows. "What are you eating there, son?"

James took an indulgent bite. "Ketchup sandwich."

"Are ketchup sandwiches what we'd call nutritious?"

"Tomatoes are a fruit," said James thickly.

"And ketchup is predominantly comprised of high fructose corn syrup."

Having a scientist for a dad was the worst, except for when it wasn't. Mostly, though, it was the worst. "So I'll eat a vegetable later."

Fleamont sighed, and set his phone down on the table. "You know, your mother and I didn't teach you to cook so that you could stuff yourself with condiments and white bread.

"You didn't _teach_ me to cook," said James flatly. "I was born with an innate ability to cook that can't be explained by modern science. _Or_ astrology."

Then he took another bite, and washed it down with a mouthful of milk.

"How hungover _are_ you?" said Sirius, eyeing the sandwich with revulsion.

"M'not," James lied. "I'm young and vital." He looked at his father. "How was your meeting?"

As the sole founder and current CEO of Sleekeazy's, which manufactured and sold hair products across the whole of Europe, Fleamont often had to travel around for what seemed like immensely boring meetings in various locales.

"It was an R&D meeting, so more interesting than usual. We're branching out into hair dye in the new year, so I was liaising directly with the department heads," said Fleamont happily, though James privately believed it sounded just as dull as any of his father's usual meetings. "How was school yesterday? And the party? You were gone by the time I got back from Taunton."

"Fine," James replied.

 _"Fine_ is the most meaningless of adjectives, not an apt descriptor of my son's life," said Fleamont. "What did you get up to? Who was at the party?"

James didn't think he'd ever lived a day in his life and notbeen asked for a play-by-play by his father, who always wanted to know what he'd been up to, who he was hanging out with, or how he was feeling. Either Fleamont was immensely interested in his son's doings, or did an excellent job of pretending he was.

He shrugged. "It was good, I dunno."

"He's only saying that because he was trashed and can't remember what he did last night," said Sirius.

"Yes, I can!" James protested, though the only lucid memory he could dredge up at that point was that of Lily Evans offering to take him home in a taxi.

"Do you remember telling your mother that you were your own man and beholden to no laws?" said his father.

"Then stealing her stash of peppermint schnapps once she'd gone to bed?" Sirius added.

Fleamont made a soft, shushing noise and lowered his voice to a whisper. "I'll replace that today, before she knows it's missing."

James looked from one face to the other, straining to spot a sign of dishonesty. "I did _not_ do either of those things."

"Yes you did, and it was obnoxious. You don't suit being that drunk, it turns you into an arsehole," said Sirius, and took a big, slurping spoonful of his own soup, which smelled absolutely delicious, no doubt better than a stodgy ketchup sandwich washed down with milk. "I fell asleep after you fought with Peter—"

"I fought with _Peter?"_

"Oh yeah, you were being a real dick about Helena."

"But Helena stalked me, and she's—"

"The absolute worst," I know, said Sirius, "but you were calling Peter a betrayer and all sorts, saying you'd never trust him again and that McGonagall was the only person you could _ever_ trust." He paused. "Which is also offensive to _me,_ now that I think of it."

"And me," put in Fleamont. "Minerva is a fine woman, but I ask you this: did _she_ ever build you a treehouse?"

James stared at Sirius for a moment, drowning in a resentful silence as he finished off his sandwich, then he lifted his glass and drained the rest of his milk in one mouthful.

"Oh!" said his father, unmoved by this deeply tortured display. He turned to Sirius with a smile. "Did I tell you that Tim got promoted?"

Fleamont proceeded to launch into a story about Tim—who James never had and never would care about—and his adventures at work, so James got up from the breakfast bar and put his empty glass in the dishwasher, feeling very much like the arsehole to which he had been compared, and just a little like a splitting headache was rumbling his way.

Then he walked into the den and found his mother sitting on the sofa, watching _Bargain Hunt_ on the telly with one elegant, manicured hand curled around her coffee mug.

"You," she said coldly, not looking away from the screen.

He threw himself into the seat next to her and laid his head on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he said, "for betraying your trust and giving you sass and stealing the rest of your peppermint schnapps, which I wasn't supposed to tell you about, but it seems like the right thing to do."

Euphemia didn't answer him immediately but shifted slightly in her seat to wrap her arm around his shoulders.

"Has my sweet boy come back?" she asked him.

James nodded, his chin bumping gently against her arm.

"Good. He's a lot more lovable," said his mother, and kissed the side of his head. "Though you'll still be getting sorely and soundly punished, just as soon as I think of a good one."

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

James wound up spending several hours in the living room with Euphemia, Sirius and Algernon—who sprang into his lap during _Homes Under the Hammer_ and curled into a ball with a contented purr—watching crap reality shows about antique selling and house renovations. Meanwhile, his father ventured to his study to "work," which at weekends meant streaming eSports tournaments, or ascending to the next level of whatever game he'd recently become addicted to.

At some point in the day, a heartfelt apology was constructed, sent, and happily accepted by Peter. More bacon was procured during a quick trip to Asda. His parents ordered pizzas for dinner, and after a few intense rounds of _Mario Kart,_ the entire family settled down for movie night. It was Euphemia's turn to pick, so James had no choice but to sit through _All About Eve_ for what must have been the tenth time in his life.

Movie night, a Potter family tradition, took place every second weekend and was considered so important by his parents that Fleamont had created an Excel spreadsheet for the sole purpose of determining who of the four of them was scheduled to choose the film, the food, and the pre-screening activity on any given evening. Opting out of movie night was considered nothing short of sacrilege, and while it certainly wasn't the coolest Saturday night activity for a seventeen-year-old, James didn't mind the obligation and rarely complained about it. He really liked his parents and enjoyed spending time with them.

More importantly, he knew how much that time meant to Sirius, even if Sirius would never admit to such a thing out loud.

Besides, Bette Davis was an absolute legend.

The next couple of days also passed fairly harmoniously, with Euphemia having not decided upon a punishment yet, and Algernon being in an uncharacteristically affectionate mood. They were also pretty successful, as James scored a hat-trick in Sunday afternoon's footy match to immense applause from the watching crowd. Not only was he awarded Man of the Match for his efforts, he was subsequently congratulated by two of his teachers at school on Monday—as well as Heather, who hadn't been there to see it but was very impressed when Hooch called attention to his efforts in front of the class during Sport and PE.

All in all, his regrettable, drunken actions appeared to have no lasting consequences.

Then Wednesday came around.

* * *

James's first class on a Wednesday didn't start until the afternoon, and in the four weeks that had passed since school had started, he had devised his own routine to get him through that particular day.

First, he'd wake up early—not by choice, but because it was impossible to ignore the deafening caterwaul of each of Sirius's five unique alarms—and make his mother breakfast, guaranteeing him major brownie points and preferential treatment for the rest of the week.

(On the first Wednesday of October, Euphemia heaped such praise upon his buttermilk pancakes that James allowed himself to hope she might forget her resolve to punish him for his criminal breach of curfew.)

After breakfast with his mother, he'd take a long, luxurious shower, free of any banging on the door from Sirius, who had to leave the house early to be at school in time for French. Following that, he'd breeze through Tuesday's homework, arrive at school in time to have lunch with his mates, and attend a double session of Sport and PE before heading home and enjoying himself as he pleased.

On the first Wednesday of October, James was halfway through this routine—and tragically, right in the middle of lunch hour, which ought have been a sacred time—when everything fell spectacularly to pieces.

"Potter!" barked McGonagall, happening upon James, Sirius and Peter as they were cutting across the mismatched flagstones of the main courtyard to get to the sixth form canteen. She moved towards them quickly, her heeled boots clicking angrily against the ground, her dark bun pulled so tight that the skin around her temples was stretched taut. "I'd like a word with you!"

Nonplussed, James stopped walking, mere inches away from the double doors that led into the school, as did his mates beside him.

"What does she want?" murmured Sirius, watching her advance upon them.

"No idea," James murmured back.

Peter, on the other hand, appeared to have been petrified, his characteristic ruddiness draining quickly from his face. It wasn't unusual for Peter to be intimidated by a teacher, but James felt that his obvious terror was a rather extreme reaction, even for him.

He didn't have time to ruminate upon Peter's theatrics, however, for McGonagall had drawn level with them, and planted her hands on her hips.

She did not appear to be happy.

"My office, Potter," she said curtly, and with an unmistakable undercurrent of anger in her tone. "Today, after school, _no_ excuses."

Correction. She was very clearly furious.

"You offi—what?" James replied, his mouth falling open. "What did _I_ do?"

McGonagall's nostrils flared.

"Don't play the innocent with me," she said. "You know perfectly well what you did, and if you had any sense at all—"

"No, I don't know, actually!"

"Do _not_ interrupt me while I am speaking, Potter—"

"But I didn't _do_ anything!" he cried, completely bewildered by the sudden ambush. Though he would have been the first to admit that he'd made troublemaking something of a habit in his earlier years, James had been positively angelic since school had started back up in September. "I didn't—honestly, Miss, I don't know what you're talking abo—"

"Lying to me at this juncture is not going to help your cause—"

"I'm not _lying—"_

"I've already called your mother."

His stomach churned with a sudden surge of fear. "My mother?"

"Yes, Potter, the woman who birthed you," McGonagall dryly retorted, remarkably calm in the face of James's spluttering confusion, though she sent a quick glare at a sniggering Sirius. "I daresay you can remember who she is without my prompting, but if you need a refresher, she'll be in my office at 4 p.m. this evening, and I expect you to be there with her or I shall have no choice but to get the headmaster involved."

"Involved in wh—"

"We'll discuss this in my office, Potter," said McGonagall, and strode ahead of him, pushing through the double doors without so much as a backwards glance.

"What the fuck was that about?" said Sirius, when the door clanged shut behind her.

"I don't know!" James ran a hand through his hair, unease slicing through his stomach like a hot knife. "I didn't bloody _do_ anything!"

"Maybe someone told her you did?" Sirius suggested. "Or maybe you did something that you didn't _think_ was bad, but actually broke about a hundred school rules and inadvertently led to widespread famine?"

"I think I'd know, Sirius. It'd have to be criminal if she'd need my mother to come in," James said, and dropped his hand helplessly to his side. His mind was working frantically, skimming over the past few days for some hint as to what he'd done to make McGonagall so angry.

"Unless you're getting an award you don't know about, your mum's going to be pissed," said Sirius.

"Apoplectic, more like," said James darkly. "And she'll believe anything McGonagall tells her, no matter what—what's wrong with you?" he added, noting suddenly that Peter looked as if he was going to throw up.

"Nothing!" Peter squeaked. A slick sheen of sweat was coating his forehead.

"You sure? You look a bit—"

"You look shit," Sirius finished. "Like you've just come down with food poisoning."

"It's nothing. I'm fine," said Peter quickly, moving towards the door as fast as his legs could carry him. He reached out to push at the handle, but his hand groped uselessly through the air as it was pulled open from the inside and Lily Evans stepped out, looking very pretty—and thankfully, quite alive—with the sleeves of her pristine white blouse pushed up to her elbows, and a pea green headband in her long, loose hair.

Evans stopped as soon as she saw them all, eyes wide and slightly alarmed, as if she'd just walked in on a casual acquaintance getting changed and didn't quite know how to move past it.

"Potter," she said at once. "Hi."

She was blushing—not a faint raspberry or a dusky pink, but a full-blown, warm-blooded red, no question about it—from cheeks to forehead, and that made even less sense than the curve ball McGonagall had just thrown at him.

"Hi," James replied, blinking at her.

He didn't even have time to register his surprise that she had greeted him specifically, because a new kind of panic was beginning to bubble up in the fiery pit of his gut, as if the unease fostered by McGonagall had decided to throw a party and this Evans-related panic had shown up unfashionably early, the first in what may have been set to become a full conga line of guests.

James had combed over the details of his encounter with Evans at McNamee's party—once he'd been alert and sober enough to do so—and concluded that it went relatively well, despite having knocked her on her arse, but clearly he had been wrong to assume that he hadn't hurt or insulted or offended her deeply. Not if the way she was looking at him now was any indication.

Whatever it was he had done to her, James was certain that he would never drink again.

"Hi," said Evans, and frowned, like she'd just happened to hear herself speak and couldn't quite fathom what she was saying. "Sorry." She shook her head. "What I meant to say was—"

"The canteen will be out of vegetables if we don't leave now!" piped up Peter. His usual flush had returned to his face, but it was violently pronounced.

"Vegetables?" Sirius frowned at him. "What—"

"All the vegetables," said Peter. "Let's go."

He dashed past Evans and disappeared into the building, leaving Sirius staring after him in disbelief.

"He doesn't even _like_ vegetables," he said, and flicked his long, sleek hair away from his face. "He literally said that vegetarianism is against his principles. Is there a carbon monoxide leak in this school today?"

"What?" said Evans.

"What?" Sirius repeated.

"I'm sorry, I was in my own world, didn't hear a thing you just said," she explained, "but do you think I could have a word with Potter for a moment?"

James was pretty sure that the look of surprise that crossed Sirius's face was a direct mirror of his own.

"In private?" Lily added.

He was acutely aware of just how loud the inside of his body was being, particularly the organ he kept caged-up on the left side of his chest, but James also couldn't help the jitters. He'd clearly done something despicable to Evans at the party, and she was preparing to enact her revenge in a quiet, secluded space with no witnesses present.

Maybe he _had_ shattered her coccyx bone, and her family were going to sue… but this was England, not America. Evans was covered by the NHS, and besides, she'd seemed fairly sprightly when she sprang out the door not seconds earlier.

"Um," said James.

"He'd love to," said Sirius, choosing an utterly bizarre moment to decide to be helpful, considering how often he had complained about James's crush on Evans in the past. "I'll go find out what the fuck is wrong with Peter."

Then he clapped James hard on the back and left, following Peter through the double doors though which Evans had just emerged, leaving them alone together—or as alone as two people could be in a school courtyard in the middle of the day, with other students milling about and the distinct sound of two lads brawling floating vaguely towards them from the field behind the science department.

"D'you want to…?" Evans began, jerking her head to the left to indicate that they should move away from the door. He nodded and followed her a few steps, coming to a halt by the window that looked in on the music room. There was a short bench beneath that window, but Evans did not sit down, so neither did James.

"So," she said, regarding him with a tight, almost pitying smile.

"So," he replied, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Are you okay after, y'know…?"

"Our untimely collision?" She tugged on a lock of her hair. "Yeah, I'm fine. Not so much as a bruise."

"That's good. Great. Glad I didn't kill you."

"Right, yeah. No, I'm definitely not a ghost."

With that portion of their conversation finished, James now had no idea what to say to her.

She was looking at him expectantly, which might have made her the second woman in about as many minutes to expect James to possess an understanding of something that he simply did not have. He didn't know how to apologise for a thing he couldn't remember doing, unless the terrible thing he _had_ done was knock her to the floor, but he'd tried to apologise for that at the party and she hadn't seemed particularly eager to assign much blame in his direction.

Seconds ticked by, long, painful seconds in which James's inability to muster up any kind of response most likely sent him sinking lower and lower in her estimation.

It was his turn to talk, so he had to say something. Anything at all. He had to wrangle it so that it seemed as if he knew what he was talking about, as if he wasn't a drunken idiot who had blacked out portions of his evening after far too much tequila. Evans was a class act. She probably never got drunk. She probably drank organic ginseng tea with honey. She probably knew what ginseng _was._

He had to say anything something. Anything. Right at that moment.

"I'm sorry," he tentatively began, "about what I did at the par—"

"I got your letter," Lily interrupted, her voice ringing out over his.

James's brain tripped slightly, like a light bulb flickering in the middle of a storm.

"What?" he said.

"Your letter," said Lily again. She was swaying almost imperceptibly, a gentle, side-to-side movement, as she swung her school bag over her shoulder and brought it to rest in front of her stomach. "I mean, it _is_ yours, right? I thought at first that maybe it wasn't, that one of your mates was trying to prank me or something—" She wasn't looking at him, her eyes cast downwards, watching herself unzip the front pocket of her bag. "—but then I still have those English lit notes you let me borrow when I had that stomach bug last year, so I checked it and the handwriting matches up, so..."

From the front of her bag, she pulled out a slim, white envelope, torn open at the top with a precise kind of neatness, with her address on the front, plainly written by his hand, clearly visible as she withdrew the letter that was inside.

The letter that…

The letter that he…

The world swam violently in front of his eyes.

"I mean, I don't—I don't really know what to say," she continued, and set about unfolding the letter before him. "It's really flattering, honestly, but it's such—it's such a _lot,_ and I don't—were you joking?" She looked up at him, and her bright green eyes were pretty and curious and maybe a little guarded. "I thought that maybe you were joking, but you don't seem like you'd do something like that."

The letter was open in her hands, and James's heart was about to rocket right out of his chest and whizz up to the stratosphere, where it would pop like a firework and shower the cosmos with fragments of his myocardium, while back on earth he collapsed and died from the horror of it all.

In a matter of seconds, she'd done completely away with any residual hope that she'd somehow been mistaken, that she'd gotten the wrong letter, or that he'd written something completely different and far less incriminating in a drunken stupor, because in her hands were the very words he'd expelled on a page at the height of an impassioned obsession.

The world was ending. This couldn't be real.

What the fuck what the fuck _what the fuck was he supposed to do?_

"Potter?" she said.

How was he supposed to handle this?

How was he supposed to handle this when he had _no bloody idea_ how she'd gotten the stupid letter in the first place? When he had never—of all the girls he'd liked before, if he could have picked one from whom he could forever guard this secret—ever planned for Lily Evans to learn how much he'd fancied her? Was he now meant to lie? He'd garnered just enough of a reputation for clowning around that he might just have been able to convince her that it was a prank, but then she might be hurt, or confused, or rightfully indignant to be made the butt of a joke.

But then, what was the other option? Telling her the truth? Then she'd _know._ She'd know that he— _I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you—_ she'd know that he'd written it. That he'd _meant_ it, once. Not now, but once, though this was as fresh for her as it was stale for him.

His hands were clammy, his face felt hotter than a forest fire, and he was pretty sure that he was seconds away from passing out completely.

James had to lie.

Lying was his only option, a single port in an unexpected storm. It would piss her off, sure, because she'd think that she'd been used for the sake of a prank, but she and James weren't friends in the first place. She'd never fancied him when he _was_ in love with her, and he'd long since given up on the hope that they'd ever be anything to one another but minor acquaintances. The truth was a necessary sacrifice.

A painful sort of sacrifice, because he'd always kind of hoped… but necessary. Completely necessary.

"I didn't mean—" he choked out, and Evans raised an eyebrow at him, and his stomach turned over, "I didn't mean for you to see that."

Or he could just admit to it like a _pathetic loser._

"But," said Lily, and flipped the envelope in her hand, "my address was on it."

"I know, but—"

"Are you saying you addressed this letter to me, even though you had no intention of sending it?"

"Yes, but I'd been having a bad day—"

"So you _meant_ what you wrote?"

"No, but—I don't, or I mean—yes, I did," he said, seeing her eyes widen at this denial. Too much was happening all at once. He was going to die, he thought, and Evans had somehow gotten her hands on an item that was supposed to be several miles away in a dusty old shoebox, known only to himself and Algernon—who didn't have the opposable thumbs required to affix a stamp to an envelope—and this didn't make sense and she _knew how he'd felt_ and he was definitely going to die right here. "It's really difficult to explain, it's like, I _don't_ but also I—"

And then everything got about a million times worse.

For there, in the background, approaching the courtyard from the north-east school entrance, was Heather Jordan.

Heather Jordan, who was clearly beelining right towards him with undeniable purpose, moving faster than was logically feasible for a girl who _hadn't_ just received a love letter from her very good mate and was on her way to confront him, staring at him with wide, confused eyes.

Heather Jordan, who had in her hand a slim, white envelope.

 _Sorely and soundly punished,_ his mother had warned him, and wouldn't she _know_ about the letters in the shoebox? Surely her years of cleaning and poking and prying through his affairs would have yielded her the knowledge of his most secret possessions, and wasn't it just like Euphemia Potter to dream up a revenge too diabolical for an ordinary, decent person to contemplate?

The woman idolized _Cersei Lannister,_ of all people!

But Heather thought that she and James were friends. Heather had a boyfriend. She was going to _hate_ him for doing this. She was going to think that he'd sent her that letter of his own volition, hellbent on manipulating her feelings, like the worst, most selfish kind of Nice Guy imaginable.

James was about to suffocate beneath the weight of his own anxiety, be beaten to death by his violently pounding heart. He couldn't handle this. _Couldn't._ Evans was bad enough, but Heather…

A mad, ridiculous, absolutely _awful_ idea popped into his head.

"Pretend to be my girlfriend," he said to Evans, firing the request at her like a bulging water balloon.

Even as the words left his mouth—and as Evans, who was visibly taken aback, let her school bag slide from her arm and land with a heavy thump on the ground—he realised that he'd just uttered the stupidest sentence he had ever and probably would ever utter.

 _"What?"_ she said, her voice low and deadly. Her gorgeous eyes narrowed in suspicion, and she drew away from him with one pointed step.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have no manners," James babbled, longing to run away but rooted to the spot like his shoes had been nailed down tight. "Pretend to be my girlfriend, _please?"_

Mad. Stupid. Awful… but he was sticking with it, apparently.

"Potter…" Evans opened her mouth and closed it again. "What the _hell—"_

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but this is a life and death situation and I think I'm having a heart attack—"

"What are you even _talking_ abo—"

"I'll explain everything later, _everything,_ I swear, but I just need you to do this for five minutes—"

"You want me to pretend—"

"Not _even_ five minutes! One minute! Thirty seconds!" Heather was approaching fast. "I swear I'll explain _everything,_ and I'm sorry, I'm _so_ sorry, but I have _no_ other option—"

"You're not making any sense!"

"—or maybe I _do_ have an option—" Fifteen feet away. Fourteen. Thirteen. "—but I don't know _how_ to change my identity and my cat would be distraught and have you _seen_ what Sirius is like when I even take a sick day? And I can't live in the wilderness! I tried camping _once_ and the tent fell down on my head in the dead of night, and I thought I was being murdered and I—"

"Jesus, Potter!" Evans snapped, and threw her arms out by her sides. _"Fine!"_

 _Fine._

The word rocketed through his head like a pinball, bouncing violently from one bumper to the other with loud and discordant clangs, before it hurtled down the drain and disappeared.

Time was running out, James had no better ideas, and Heather was only two or three feet away.

He grabbed Lily's shoulders and kissed her.


End file.
